4,990 words
Hostages to Momus
I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one
time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and undertook a thing that
I'd have to apologize for even under the New Jersey trust laws.
Me and Caligula Polk of Muskogee in the Creek
Nation, was down in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and
monte game. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico, just like
selling forty-eight cents' worth of postage-stamps for forty-nine cents is over here. So
Uncle Porfirio he instructs the rurales to
attend our case.
Rurales?
They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental crayon portraits of the
worthy constable with a tin star and a gray goatee. The ruraleswell, if we'd mount our Supreme Court
on broncos, arm 'em with Winchesters, and start 'em out after John Doe et al. we'd have about the same thing.
When the rurales started for us we
started for the States. They chased us as far as Matamoras. We hid in a brickyard; and
that night we swum the Rio Grande, Caligula with a brick in each hand, absentminded,
which he drops upon the soil of Texas, forgetting he had em.
From
there we migrated to San Antone,and then over
to New Orleans where we took a rest. And in that town of cotton bales and other adjuncts
to female beauty we made the acquaintance of drinks invented by the Creoles during the
period of Louey Cans, in which they are still served at the side doors. The most I can
remember of this town is that me and Caligula and a Frenchman name McCarty
wait a minute; Adolph McCartywas trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back trading-stamps due on the Louisiana
Purchase, when somebody hollers that the johndarms are coming. I have an insufficient
recollection of buying two yellow tickets through a window; and I seemed to see a man
swing a lantern and say "All aboard!" I remembered no more, except that the
train butcher was covering me and Caligula up with Augusta J. Evans's works and figs.
When we become revised, we find that we have
collided up against the State of Georgia at a spot
hitherto unaccounted for in time tables except by an asterisk, which means that trains
stop every other Thursday on signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellow
pine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir, for the wind was
banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the weatherboarding and the chicken coop
was right under the window.
Me and Caligula dressed and went downstairs. The landlord was shelling
peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and Hongkong in complexion
though in other respects he seemed amenable in the exercise of his sentiments and
features.
Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man, though red-haired and
impatient of painfulness of any kind, speaks up.
"Pardner," says he, "good-morning, and be darned to you. Would
you mind telling us why we are at? We know the reason we are where, but can't exactly
figure out on account of at what place."
"Well, gentlemen," says the
landlord, "I reckoned you-all would be inquiring this morning. You all dropped off of
the nine-thirty train here last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smart
in liquor. I can inform you that you are now in the town of Mountain Valley, in the State
of Georgia."
"On top of that," says Caligula, "don't say that we can't
have anything to eat."
"Sit down, gentlemen," says the
lord, "and in twenty minutes I'll call you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere
in town."
That breakfast turned out to be composed of
fried bacon and a yellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and
flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets out a dish of the
exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so me and Caligula makes the acquintance
of the celebrated food that enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees
for nearly four years at a stretch.
"The
wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boys didn't chase the
Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay. It would have made me that mad to eat
this truck they call mahogany!"
"Hog
and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this section."
"Then," says Caligula, "they ought to keep it where it
belongs. I thought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogee at the
St. Lucifer House, I'd show you some breakfast grub. Antelope steaks and fried liver to
begin on, and venison cutlets with chili con came and
pineapple fritters, and then some sardines and mixed pickles; and top it off with a can of
yellow clings and a bottle of beer. You won't find a layout like that on the bill of
affairs of any of your Eastern restauraws."
"Too lavish," says I. "I've traveled, and I'm unprejudiced.
There'll never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long enough to
stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over to Norfolk for his rolls, and reaches
up to Vermont and digs a slice of butter out of a spring-house, and then turns over a
beehive close to a white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty
close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount Olympia."
"Too
ephemeral," says Caligula. "I'd want ham and eggs, or rabbit stew, anyhow, for a
chaser. What do you consider the most edifying and casual in the way of a dinner?"
"I've been infatuated from time to
time," I answers, "with fancy ramifications of grub such as terrapins, lobsters,
reed birds, jambo-laya, and canvas-covered ducks; but after all there's nothing less
displeasing to me than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on a balcony in sound of the
Broadway street cars, with a hand-organ playing down below, and the boys hollering extras
about the latest suicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Pony Cany. And that's all,
except a demi-tasse."
"Well,"
says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a conniseer; and when you go
around with a demi-tasse you are naturally bound
to buy 'em stylish grub."
"It's
a great town for epicures," says I. "You'd soon fall into their ways if you was
there."
"I've
heard it was," says Caligula. "But I reckon I wouldn't. I can polish my
fingernails all they need myself."
II
After breakfast we went out on the
front porch, lighted up two of the landlord's flor de
upas perfectos, and took a look at Georgia.
The installment of scenery visible to the eye
looked mighty poor. As far as we could see with red hills all washed down with gullies and
scattered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all that kept the rail
fences from falling down. About fifteen miles over to the north was a little range of well-timbered
mountains.
That town of Mountain Valley wasn't going. About a dozen people permeated
along the sidewalks; but what you saw mostly was rainbarrels and roosters, and boys
poking around with sticks in piles of ashes made by burning the scenery of Uncle Tom
shows.
And just then there passes down on the other side of the street a high man in a long black
coat and a beaver hat. All the people in sight bowed, and some crossed the street to shake
hands with him; folks came out of stores and houses to holler at him; women leaned out of
windows and smiled; and all the kids stopped playing to look at him. Our landlord stepped
out on the porch and bent himself double like a carpenter's rule, and sung out, "Good-morning,
Colonel," when he was a dozen yards gone by.
"And
is that Alexander, pa?" says Caligula to the landlord; "and why is he called
great?"
"That,
gentlemen," says the landlord, "is no less than Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham,
the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, mayor of Mountain Valley, and
chairman of the Perry County board of immigration and public improvements."
"Been away a good many years, hasn't
he?" I asked.
"No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down-to the post-office for his
mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him thus every morning. The colonel is
our most prominent citizen. Besides the height of the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville
Tap Railroad, he owns a thousand acres of that land across the creek. Mountain Valley
delights, sir, to honor a citizen of such wealth and public spirit."
For an hour that afternoon Caligula sat on the back of his neck on the porch
and studied a newspaper, which was unusual in a man who despised print. When he was
through he took me to the end of the porch among the sunlight and drying dishtowels. I
knew that Caligula had invented a new graft. For he chewed the ends of his mustache and
ran the left catch of his suspenders up and down, which was his way.
What is it now?" I asks. "Just so it ain't floating mining stocks
or raising Pennsylvania pinks, we'll talk it over."
Pensylvania
pinks? Oh, that refers to a coin-raising scheme of
the
Keystoners. They burn the soles of old women's feet to make them tell where their money's
hid."
Caligula's words in business was always few and bitter.
"You see them mountains," said he, pointing. "And you see that
colonel man that owns railroads and cuts more ice when he goes to the post-office than
Roosevelt does when he cleans 'em out. What we're going to do is to kidnap the latter into
the former, and inflict ransom of ten thousand dollars."
"Illegality," says I,
shaking my head.
"I knew you'd say that," says Caligula. "At first sight
it does seem to jar peace and dignity. But it don't. I got the idea out of that newspaper.
Would you commit aspersions on a equitable graft that the United States itself has
condoned and indorsed and ratified?"
"Kidnapping," says I, "is an immoral function in the
derogatory list of the statutes. If the United States upholds it, it must be a recent
enactment of ethics, along with race suicide and rural delivery."
"Listen,"
says Caligula, "and I'll explain the case set down in the papers. Here was a Greek
citizen named Burdick Harris," says he, "captured for a graft by Africans; and
the United States sends two gunboats to the State of Tangiers and makes the King of
Morocco give up seventy thousand dollars to Raisuli."
"Go slow," says I. "That sounds too international to take in
all at once. It's like 'thimble, thimble, who's got the naturalization papers?' "
"'Twas press despatches from Constantinople," says Caligula.
"You'll see, six months from now. They'll be confirmed by the monthly magazines; and
then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside of photos of the Mount Pelee
eruption photos in the while-you-get-your-hair-cut weeklies It's all right, Pick. This
African man Raisuli hides Burdick Harris up in the mountains, and advertises his price to
the governments of different nations. Now you wouldn't think for a minute," goes on
Caligula, "that John Hay would have chipped in and helped his graft along if it
wasn't a square game, would you?"
"Why,
no," says I. "I've always stood right in with Bryan's policies, and I couldn't
consciously say a word against the Republican administration just now. But if Harris was a
Greek, on what system of international protocols did Hay interfere?"
"It ain't exactly set forth in the papers," says Caligula. "I
suppose it's a matter of sentiment. You know he wrote this poem, 'Little Breeches'; and
them Greeks wear little or none. But anyhow, John Hay sends the Brooklyn and the Olympia over, and they cover Africa with thirty-inch
guns. And then Hay cables after the health of the persona
"rata. 'And how are they this morning?' he wires. 'Is Burdick Harris alive yet,
or Mr. Raisuli dead?' And the King of Morocco sends up the seventy thousand dollars, and
they turn Burdick Harris loose. And there's not half the hard feelings among the nations
about this little kidnapping matter as there was about the peace congress. And Burdick
Harris says to the reporters, in the Greek language, that he's often heard about the
United States, and he admires Roosevelt next to Raisuli, who is one of the whitest and
most gentlemanly kidnappers that he ever worked alongside of. So you see, Pick,"
winds up Caligula, "we've got the law of nations on our side. We'll cut this colonel
man out of the herd, and corral him in them little mountains, and stick up heirs and
assigns for ten thousand dollars." .
"Well,
you seldom little red-headed territorial terror," I answers, "you can't bluff
your uncle Tecumseh Pickens! I'll be your company in this graft. But I misdoubt if
you've absorbed the inwardness of this Burdick Harris case, Calig; and if on any morning
we get a telegram from the Secretary of State asking about the health of the scheme, I
propose to acquire the most propinquitous and celeritous mule in this section and gallop
diplomatically over into the neighboring and peaceful nation of Alabama."
lII
Me and Caligula spent the next three days
investigating the bunch of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T.
Rockingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covered with bushes and
trees that you could only reach by a secret path that
we cut up the side of it. And the only way to reach the mountain was to follow up the bend
of a branch that wound among the elevations.
Then I took in hand an important subdivision of the proceedings. I went up to
Atlanta on the train and laid in a two-hundred-and-fifty dollar supply of the most
gratifying and efficient lines of grub that money could buy. I always was an admirer of
viands in their more palliative and revised stages. Hog and hominy are not only inartistic
to my stomach, but they give indigestion to my moral sentiments. And I thought of Colonel
Jackson T. Rockingham, president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, and how he
would miss the luxury of his home fare as is so famous among wealthy Southerners. So I
sunk half of mine and Caligula's capital in as elegant a layout of fresh and canned
provisions as Burdick Harris or any other professional kidnapper ever saw in a camp.
I put another hundred in a couple of cases of Bordeaux, two quarts of cognac,
two hundred Havana regalias with gold bands, and
a camp stove and stools and folding cots. I wanted Colonel Rockingham to be comfortable;
and I hoped after he gave up the ten thousand dollars he would give me and Caligula as
good a name for gentlemen and entertainers as the Greek man did the friend of his that
made the United States his bill collector against Africa. When the goods came down from
Atlanta, we hired a wagon, moved them up on the little mountain, and established camp. And
then we laid for the colonel.
We caught him one morning about two miles out from Mountain Valley, on his
way to look after some of his burnt umber farm land. He was an elegant old gentleman, as
thin and tall as a trout rod, with frazzled
shirt-cuffs and specs on a black string. We explained to him, brief and easy, what we
wanted; and Caligula showed him, careless, the handle of his forty-five under his coat.
"What?"
says Colonel Rockingham. "Bandits in Perry County, Georgia! I shall see that the
board of immigration and public improvements hears of this!"
"Be
so un-foolhardy as to climb into that buggy," says Caligula, "by order of the
board of perforation and public depravity. This is a business meeting, and we're anxious
to adjourn sine qua non."
We
drove Colonel Rockingham over the mountain and up the side of it as far as the buggy could
go. Then we tied the horse, and took our prisoner on foot up to the camp.
"Now, colonel," I says to him, "we're after the ransom, me and
my partner; and no harm will come to you if the King of Morif your friends send up
the dust. In the meantime, we are gentlemen the same as you. And if you give us your word
not to try to escape, the freedom of the camp is yours."
"I give you my word," says the
colonel.
"All right," says I; "and now it's eleven o'clock and me and
Mr. Polk will proceed to inoculate the occasion with a few well-timed trivialities in the
line of grub."
"Thank you," says the colonel; "I believe I could relish a
slice of bacon and a plate of hominy."
"But you won't," says I, emphatic. "Not in this camp. We soar
in higher regions than them occupied by your celebrated but repulsive dish. "
While the colonel read his paper, me and Caligula took off our coats and went
in for a little luncheon de luxe just to show him. Caligula was a fine
cook of the Western brand. He could toast a buffalo or fricassee a couple of steers as
easy as a woman could make a cup of tea. He was gifted in the way of knocking together
edibles when haste and muscle and quantity was to be considered. He held the record west
of the Arkansas River for frying pancakes with his left hand, broiling venison cutlets
with his right and skinning a rabbit with his teeth at the same time. But I could do
things en casserole and d la creole, and handle the oil and tabasco as
gently and nicely as a French chef.
So at twelve o'clock we had a hot lunch ready that looked like a banquet on a
Mississippi River steamboat. We spread it on the tops of two or three big boxes, opened
two quarts of the red wine, set the olives and a canned oyster cocktail and a ready-made
Martini by the colonel's plate, and called
him to grub.
Colonel Rockingham drew up his
campstool, wiped off his specs, and looked at the things on the table. Then I thought he
was swearing; and I felt mean because I hadn't taken more pains with the victuals. But he
wasn't; he was asking a blessing; and me and Caligula hung our heads and I saw a tear drop
from the colonel's eye into his cocktail.
.
I
never saw a man eat with so much earnestness
and application not hastily like a grammarian or one of the canal, but slow and
appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real vine
bonjour.
In
an hour and a half the colonel leaned back. I
brought him a pony of brandy and his black coffee, and set the box of Havana regalias on the table.
"Gentlemen," says he, blowing out the smoke and trying to breathe
it back again, "when we view the eternal hills and the smiling and beneficent
landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator who -------------"
"Excuse me, colonel," says I,
"but there's some business to attend to now"; and I brought out paper and pen
and ink and laid 'em before him. "Who do you
want to send to for the money?" I asks.
"I reckon," says he, after
thinking a bit, "to the vice-president of our railroad, at the general offices of the
Company in Edenville."
"How far is it to Edenville from
here?" I asked.
"About ten miles," says he.
Then I dictated these lines, and Colonel Rockingham wrote them out:
I am kidnapped and held a prisoner by two
desperate outlaws in a place which is useless to
attempt to find. They demand ten-thousand dollars at once for my release. The amount must
be raised immediately, and these directions followed. Come alone with the money to Stony
Creek, which runs out of Blacktop Mountains. Follow the bed of the creek till you come to
a big flat rock on the left bank, on which is marked a cross in red chalk. Stand on the
rock and wave a white flag. A guide will come to you and conduct you to where I am held.
Lose no time.
After the colonel had finished this, he asked permission to tack on a
postscript about how white he was being treated, so the railroad wouldn't feel uneasy in
its bosom about him. We agreed to that. He wrote down that he had just had lunch with the
two desperate ruffians; and then he set down
the whole bill of fare, from cocktails to coffee. He
wound up with the remark that dinner would be ready about six, and would probably be a more licentious and intemperate
affair than lunch.
Me and Caligula read it, and decided to let it go; for we, being cooks, were
amenable to praise, though it sounded out of place on a sight draft for ten thousand
dollars.
I took the letter over to Mountain Valley road and watched for a
messenger. By and by a colored equestrian came along on horseback, riding toward
Edenville. I gave him a dollar to take the letter to the railroad offices; and then I went
back to camp.
IV
About four o'clock in the afternoon,
Caligula, who was acting as lookout, calls to me: "I have to report a white shirt
signaling on the starboard bow, Sir."
I
went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in an alpaca coat and no collar.
"Gentlemen," says Colonel Rockingham, "allow me to introduce
my brother, Captain Duval C. Rockingham, vice-president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap
Railroad."
"Otherwise the King of Morocco,"
says I. "I reckon you don't mind my counting the ransom, just as a business
formality."
"Well, no, not exactly," says the fat man, "not
when it comes. I turned that matter over to our second vice-president. I was anxious after
Brother Jackson's safetiness. I reckon he'll be along right soon.
"What does that lobster salad you mentioned taste like, Brother
Jackson?"
"Mr.
Vice-President," says I, "you'll oblige us by remaining here till the second V.
P. arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don't want any roadside speculators
selling tickets."
In half an hour Caligula sings out again:
"Sail ho! Looks like an apron on a
broomstick."
I perambulated down the cliff again, and escorted up a man six foot three,
with a sandy beard and no other dimensions that you could notice. Thinks I to myself, if
he's got ten thousand dollars on his person it's in one bill and folded lengthwise.
"Mr.
Patterson G. Coble, our second vice-president," announces the colonel.
"Glad to know you, gentlemen," says this Coble. "I came up to
disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our general passenger agent, is now
negotiating a peach-crate full of our railroad bonds with the Perry County Bank for a
loan. My dear Colonel Rockingham, was that chicken gumbo or cracked goobers on the bill of
fare in your note? Me and the conductor of fifty-six was having a dispute about it."
"Another
white wings on the rocks!" hollers Caligula. "If I see any more I'll fire on 'em
and swear they was torpedo-boats!"
The guide goes down again, and convoys into the lair a person in blue
overalls carrying an amount of inebriety and a lantern. I am so sure that this is Major
Tucker that I don't even ask him until we are up above; and then I discover that it is
Uncle Timothy, the yard switchman at Edenville, who is sent ahead to flag our
understandings with the gossip that Judge
Prendergast, the railroad's attorney, is inI the
process of mortgaging Colonel Rockingham's farming lands to make up the ransom.
While he is talking, two men crawl from under the bushes into camp, and
Caligula, with no white flag to disinter him from his plain duty, draws his gun. But
again, Colonel Rockingham intervenes and introduces
Mr. Jones and Mr. Batts, engineer and fireman of train number forty-two.
"Excuse us," says Batts, "but me and Jim have hunted
squirrels all over this mounting, and we don't need no white flag. Was that straight,
colonel, about the plum pudding and pineapples and real store cigars?"
"Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!" howls Caligula.
"Suppose it's the firing line of the freight conductors and brakeman."
"My last trip down," says I, wiping
off my face. "If the S. & E. wants
to run an excursion up here just because we kidnapped their president, let 'em. We'll put
out our sign. 'The Kidnapper's Cafe and Trainsmen's Home.' "
This time I caught Major Tallahassee Tucker by
his own confession, and I felt easier. I
asked him into the creek, so I could drown him if he happened to be a track-walker or
caboose porter. All the way up the mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a
thing that his intelligence in life had skipped.
Up above I got his mind segregated from food
and asked if he had raised the ransom.
"My dear sir," says he, "I
succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty thousand dollars' worth of the bonds of our
railroad, and -----------"
"Never mind just now, major," says I. "It's all right, then. Wait
till after dinner, and we'll settle the business. All of you gentlemen," I continues
to the crowd "are invited to stay to dinner. We have mutually trusted one another,
and the white flag is supposed to wave over the proceedings."
"The correct idea," says Caligula, who was standing by me.
"Two baggage-masters and a ticket agent dropped out of a tree while you was below the
last time. Did the major man bring the money?"
"He says," I answered, "that
he succeeded in negotiating the loan."
If any cooks ever earned ten thousand dollars in twelve hours me and Caligula
did that day. At six o'clock we spread the top of the mountain with as fine a dinner as the personnel
of any railroad ever engulfed. We opened all the wine, and we concocted entrees and pieces
de resistance, and stirred up little savory chef de cuisines and organized a mass of grub such
as has seldom instigated out of canned and bottled goods. The railroad gathered around it,
and the wassail and diversions was intense.
After
the feast me and Caligula, in the line of business, takes Major Tucker to one side and
talks ransom. The major pulls out an agglomeration of
currency about the size of
the price of a town lot in the suburbs of Rabbitville, Arizona, and makes this outcry.
"Gentlemen," says he, "the stock of the Sunrise &
Edenville railroad has depreciated some. The best I could do with thirty thousand
dollars' worth of bonds was to secure a loan of eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents. On
the farming lands of Colonel Rockingham, Judge Prendergast was able to obtain, on a ninth
mortgage, the sum of fifty dollars. You will find the amount, one hundred and thirty-seven
fifty, correct. "
"A
railroad president," said I, looking this Tucker in the eye, "and the owner of a
thousand acres of land; and yet"
"Gentlemen," says Tucker, "the railroad is ten miles long.
There don't any train run on it except when the crew goes out in the pines and gathers
enough lightwood knots to get up steam. A long time ago, when times was good, the net
earnings used to run as high as eighteen dollars a week. Colonel Rockingham's land has
been sold for taxes thirteen times. There hasn't been a peach crop in this part of Georgia
for two years. The wet spring killed the watermelons. Nobody around here has money enough
to buy fertilizer; and the land is so poor the corn
crop failed, and there wasn't enough grass to support the rabbits. All the people have had
to eat in this section for over a year is hog and hominy, and ----------"
"Pick,"
interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, "what are you going to do with that
chicken-feed?"
I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over to Colonel
Rockingham and slaps him on the back.
"Colonel," says I, "I hope
you've enjoyed our little joke. We don't want to carry it too far. Kidnappers! Well,
wouldn't it tickle your uncle? My name's Rhinegelder, and I'm a nephew of Chauncey Depew.
My friend's a second cousin of the editor of Puck.
So you can see. We are down South enjoying
ourselves in our humorous way. Now, there's two quarts of cognac to open yet, and then the
joke's over."
What's the use to go into details? One or two will be enough. I remember Major Tallahassee Tucker playing on a jew's-harp,
and Caligula waltzing with his head on the watch pocket of a tall baggagemaster. I hesitate to refer to the cake-walk done by me
and Mr. Patterson G. Coble with Colonel Jackson T.
Rockingham between us.
And even on the next morning, when you
wouldn't think it possible, there was a consolation for me and Caligula. We knew that
Raisuli himself never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with the Sunrise
& Edenville Tap Railroad.
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